Noreen
Doyle
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Noreen
Doyle
Egyptology
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Fiction
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Ankhtifi the Brave is dying.
Yet he is not an old man. He can hold his back straight. He does not lean so very much upon his long staff. The two loaves of khenemet-bread and the foreleg of a calf he carries in a finely woven basket do not cramp his arms. It is, he supposes, the wounds of campaigns festering invisibly beneath his skin. They have violated his body, pierced his shadow, created windows through which his ba-soul would fly, as he has defended his King. Or perhaps it is the scarcity of bread, the thinness of cattle and fowl, the filth in the water. In time, he allows his fluttering ba, in time. Not yet. It is dawn, not dusk. The sun mounts the eastern horizon, over the steep cliffs toward which he walks on a path carefully beaten down and clean, on which oxen will someday drag a sledge and his coffin from the town of Hefat. Unlike other lords in other districts, he keeps no sunshade-bearer to follow him: now that man sits at the door of Idy's house, giving out grain to the needy, of which there are so many in these days. Ankhtifi himself shades Hefat. Does the mountain that shades the city need a fan of ostrich feathers held over its peak? Only falcon wings shade his head, great ones, perfumed. Soon they will fly away, Ankhtifi thinks as the scent of incense fills his nose, warmed by the morning sun. They will fly away to the far-off Residence until sleep and desire draw them back again to these two khenemet-loaves and the foreleg of a calf. Spearmen walk behind him, one on the right, one on the left. It is a small display of the force he can muster at an instant. Everyone loves Ankhtifi here in Hefat and in the Districts of Nekhen and Edfu, but men from other districts and other cities sail upstream and moor here, from Thebes and from Koptos, and those men must not forget. O for the days when one cast arrows and spears at one's foe and received them in return, rather than bags of barley and emmer and chickling peas. O for the days when all the falcons in the sky were little ones, whose shadows frightened geese, although Ankhtifi is not afraid, not so very much. The track takes him from brown fields that crack like bread left too long in the oven to the the desert where life has forever been even sparser. A pyramid of a hill rises before him, quite apart from the enormous cliffs to the east: a pyramid built by the gods, Ankhtifi's way to heaven when his body is buried deep in the rock at its base and his ba at last flies away from this droughtened earth to the Field of Offerings, eternally moist, forever green. Every season the Red Land creeps a little nearer to the river. The withered roots of lentils and lettuce and weeds cannot hold it back. Only the river, rising from its bed like an army, can do so, and so there is a prayer within his tomb that is carved out like an offering-chapel before the pyramid-hill: may Horus grant that the river will flood for his son Neferkare. It has not done so very well, not for a very long time. Ankhtifi arrives at the entrance of his tomb at the end of an open-air hall, where, at Ankhtifi's signal the spearmen pound their piebald shields with the butts of their spears. "Great Overlord!" comes a cry from deeper shadows. Voices echo from within the tomb. A man emerges with a broom in his hand and bows low before Ankhtifi. He is thin. "You may speak," says the Royal Seal-bearer, Lector-priest, General, Chief of Scouts, Chief of Foreign Regions, the Great Overlord of Edfu and Nekhen, Ankhtifi. "My lord," says the man, Sasobek, showing dusty tongue and teeth, "you are welcome. We did not expect you so early in the day, or else we would have brought a leg of beef and beer sweetened with date juice." More intention than promise fills Sasobek's words: there is little beer and less beef in Hefat or elsewhere in the districts, and the dates have not ripened well. Sasobek would offer them if he could. The tomb-chapel spreads wide before them, its floor swept clean of any trace of dirt. Thirty columns hold aloft its ceiling, some aglow in patchwork sunlight that streams through the unfinished roof to which will soon be added a few last blocks. None of the columns are quite alike, some with beveled corners, others round or onionlike, their forms chiseled out as best the earth permitted the masons, but regardless, they are all strong. They are Ankhtifi's. "My name is here, coupled with your dearest desire," says the falcon that has shaded him, now settling into a particular darkness. No one else hears this voice or sees the bright eye and the brighter eye staring at the two loaves and the leg Ankhtifi has set down at his feet. "Take care." "In your name, my lord, I have always taken care," Ankhtifi whispers. The workmen hear but say nothing because he is their overlord and a lector-priest and they know that he speaks to the god. In pools of light stand and crouch men, all thinner than they have once been; scraping out their lives in the drought and the famine has worn them down as if they were chisels and brushes. They bow before him, careful amidst their bowls of paint. Ankhtifi takes stock of them not as though they were tools but as though they were his sons. He knows them, every one, and their wives and sisters and aged parents, their sons and daughters, their cattle and their fields, their skills and their weaknesses. He is surprised to find the son of his body Idy here among the outline-draftsmen and painters. Brightly colored scenes surround them, painted on plaster, newly finished, their figures bold and vigorous. The festival of the falcon-god Hemen of Hefat is celebrated in paddled boats. Fatted cattle are herded and butchered, fish harpooned and netted in abundance. Porters bring bag after bag after bag of grain on their shoulders to be emptied into the granaries. Once it was so. Idy and his three brothers accompany Ankhtifi. Once that, too, was so. What, Ankhtifi wonders, is his son doing here? Why is Idy not at home before the door from which grain is handed, or inspecting the granaries, or overseeing the riverbank? He taps his staff upon the immaculate floor of his tomb. "My son, my heir." "My lord, my father." "Tell me your business. I would know what occurs in my domain and what you have seen, for soon you will stand in my place, and I would see by your eyes while I'm still among the living." Idy's gaze drifts, for a moment into light, for a moment into shadows. Does he see the god? His lips part, so that Ankhtifi sees Idy's tongue before he speaks. "I came to account for the workmen's rations." Good, then, good, Ankhtifi thinks. There is enough in Hefat that none go entirely without, but only because the hungry do not mistake excess for enough, nor do the treasurers mistake too little for enough. And Idy does not see the god, not yet. Idy goes on: "What work these artists do at your word! O you will live well in the Field of Offerings, my lord, my father, and none shall ever dishonor your name, nor pollute your house of eternity." He turns away from Ankhtifi to gesture at the painted plaster on the western wall. "You are forever young, and our beloved mother stands here, and my brothers, your sons, here and here and here -- and I! Since the days of our forefather Sobekhotep, no one here has ever seen the like of this tomb or its owner." "Since?" Ankhtifi rasps. Is this doubt in his son's voice? Could it be? Ankhtifi's breath catches in his throat. But Idy says, "Not even then -- not ever, before or after! Did Sobekhotep call himself Great Overlord? Did the god Horus plan out his tomb? Did the god Hemen dictate a spell to guard over it? Did any god ever proclaim anyone other than Ankhtifi to be peerless, whose like has never before been seen nor ever will be seen? Who else has ever called himself the hero, the brave?" With his staff Ankhtifi strikes a pillar with such force that a little yellow paint scrapes away. It does not matter. The relief carved upon its face will endure for a million years. There are murmurs in the dark. Sasobek comes forward with his broom and attends to the floor. Sand has come along on Ankhtifi's sandals, and Sasobek discreetly attends to that, too. The falcon stirs in the shadows, rasping claws along the standard upon which he perches when at rest. None sees him, none hears him, but Ankhtifi, and none but he and the falcon is party to the agreement between them. Ankhtifi walks to the edge of the burial shaft cut into the center of the floor, like a black pool that gives no reflection, that refuses the light. His staff prods its darkness. "Do you remember Khuu, the wretch of Edfu?" "Yes!" the workmen cry, and Idy says, "I do." "Men killed their neighbors, the fields of Edfu were left untended like marshland. This is the state of affairs that those in Thebes would wish upon the entire countryside. They deny our rightful King Neferkare, a child of the House of Khety, and would place their own line of wretches upon the Horus-throne. Horus himself summoned me, Ankhtifi, to sail upstream and free knives from men's palms and make men embrace those who had slain their fathers." "We remember that day," says Idy. The others echo him. "You spoke when all of us were silent, when the other lords had lost their speech and could not raise their arms." "I led you to the river," Ankhtifi says. "It was a little higher in those days." A little, he thinks, just a little. "Do you remember?" "We remember!" the men cry, and, as the falcon -- it is full daylight; why is he still here? will the King in his Residence sleep the day through? -- makes a noise like the bending of a copper saw, Ankhtifi remembers. #
People were less hungry in those days. Boats were sailed upstream and rowed downstream, rudders set at the sterns with less concern for sandbars and stones. There had been even better years with abundant harvests and fatted cattle and nets burdened with fish of all kinds, but those were all lost to living memory and known only through tales of the days of kings named Khufu and Unas and Pepy, when men were called northward to labor on great pyramids. One day -- that day -- a boat came downstream. Its mast and spars were laid across its deck, but there was no sign of a sail. Eight men manned its oars, a ninth kept his hand at the tiller, and women and many children huddled in its wet bottom, for the deck planking had been taken up. "Where is the Great Overlord! We have sworn not to take our hands from looms and tiller until we have come to the city where the Great Overlord lives! Our hands bleed! We have passed by Nekhen because he was not there! Is he here in Hefat?" cried the helmsman as the rowers put the boat to shore. Two of them leapt into the river and drove the boat ashore as the children dumped themselves overboard and splashed in the water until their mothers joined them and herded them to land. They crouched in a place of a little shade of a tree, where they looked like twigs broken from its branches. The helmsman said, "Where is the Great Overlord of this district?" "The Great Overlord is where he should be, attending to trouble when it comes to his shore," said Ankhtifi. These were not fit men: like the women and children, their limbs were thin, their stomachs distended, and they wore cloaks of bruises and welts. "Where are you from? Are you people of mine?" "Would that we were," said the helmsman, "or else we would not have trouble to bring to your shore, my lord. We came from Edfu in this old boat that we took from a boatwright before he could break it up for timber." "If the boatwright should come in search of his craft, you might be punished. I may punish you for theft anyway." "He won't come after it, my lord. He's dead, but not by our hands. His brother killed him, because he would not pledge his heart to Khuu's new lord." "New lord!" Ankhtifi exclaimed. "Our lord, Neferkare, still wears the crowns in the Residence at Nenu-Nesut, so the administrator of Edfu has no new lord. I, the King's Seal-bearer, would have been informed otherwise." "Neferkare is king in Nenu-Nesut and Lower Egypt, and here in the District of Nekhen, but he is not the king of Edfu any longer," said the helmsman. "Khuu has declared it." "What manner of abomination is this? Has some vile Nubian sorcerer laid a spell on Khuu's heart?" The helmsman did not know; he had spoken all that he could of the matters of big men and he, a little man, was tired and hungry and his wife and children were crying on the shore. Ankhtifi learned the helmsman was in fact a potter and although Hefat had potters already appointed him a place where he might build a little house and workshop. That evening Ankhtifi laid a banquet for these people on the riverbank and another in his pillared hall, where he summoned his sons and his council. They ate choice cuts of beef, drank good beer, ate white bread, and spoke of what the potter had told them. The Overseer of Troops of Hefat, Minnefer, said, "The District of Edfu lies at the southern border of our district, and we are very near the northern. It is a long way." "Khuu is like a wound in the foot of the King," Ankhtifi said. "We are the hands of the King." "And where is the King's heart but in the Residence," murmured Minnefer, "far to the north at the entrance of the Faiyum. He might as well be sailing on the Great Green." "He is near the gods and honors them. He assures the river floods in its season. That flood must pass Edfu before it reaches us. Would you have a rebel between us and the first floodwaters?" "The vile Nubians lie between us and the first floodwaters, and what ill is that? Unless they're drinking up the water of the river, to make it flood so poorly as it does nowadays." Everyone laughed, even Ankhtifi. "If Edfu falls," Ankhtifi said, letting his smile fade word by word, "what of Elephantine, to the south? Will it fall to Khuu? Will Khuu then join with the Nubians upstream? Will they together push north with the current and attempt to crush us?" "Pah," said Minnefer, slouching on his stool, "for once in your life you're too ready for a fight, Ankhtifi! Usually you're all speech and council. Life is good in Hefat. I am old enough to know. Don't go looking for death in Edfu. Death is bad anywhere. A rebel against our King would have to arise in Elephantine for there to be any real trouble. It will not happen." "And did you think a rebel would arise in Edfu?" #
"Oh, no, but you did, Ankhtifi the Brave!" the workmen say, and for a moment Ankhtifi does not know where he is: why is his hall so dark, why has the smell of the roast evaporated, replaced by the taste of dust in his mouth, and why are workmen here in the place of his councilors? Why are these men so thin? Where are his other three sons? "Khuu was ever a wretch and a rebel," Idy says. "You could not fail against him." Could he? No, he could not, because the god said so. And suddenly it is as if he stands on the hill that workmen's chisels have not yet carved out, as if the title Great Overlord of Edfu is not yet his, and as if the falcon does not yet follow him in shadows. read the rest of the story in The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age (Tor, 2004)
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 Historical fantasy novelette The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age edited by Harry Turtledove and Noreen Doyle Tor Books 2004 Visit the home page of
the critically-acclaimed anthology
other excerpts:THE FIRST HEROES New Tales of the Bronze Age
"an extraordinary portrait of ambition and loss...
It's
rare to find the atmosphere of a past era evoked with such compulsive
(and entirely apposite) perversity."
One of the recommended stories for the month -- Nick
Gevers, Locus,
May 2004
"One of the best-written stories.... I don't think anyone who was not thoroughly immersed in Egyptian history could have written this story, with its stunning detail and easy handling of ancient Egyptian words, names, concepts, but it takes an exceptional talent to convey such knowledge with grace and clarity, resisting the impulse to deaden the story with far too much scholarship..." "The editors contribute personally to the overall quality [...], Doyle with 'Ankhtifi the Brave Is Dying....' [...] Kudos to a book to which lovers of historical fiction, fantastic and not, should be directed." "High points include... Doyle's" --Paula
Guran, DarkEcho
"You missed the best short story, Noreen Doyle's "Ankhfiti the Brave is Dying," FIRST HEROES. --Anonymous
comment posted
on the 2005 Locus Magazine
Poll, which did not include "Ankhtifi
the Brave is dying."
Callum's Feast The Chapter of Bringing a Boat into Heaven The Chapter of Coming forth by Night The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold The Dovecote The Execration Horizon The Rope Shadow of the Pyramid Trading Places |
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